music, food, lifestyle, film – California

Tag: Jhene Aiko

My journey with Rae Sremmurd began with a monkey meet-and-greet in Los Angeles and ended at a Las Vegas nightclub in a literal hail of cash. In between, I met the Kings of Woodland Hills, watched the sunset over the desert from a private jet, went on a wild goose chase in search of a huge sack of cash, drank Hip and Hen in a multi-level hotel suite, rode around in a Hulk-green stretch Hummer limo, sat awkwardly at a strip club while one of my subjects threw about $2,000 in roughly 20 minutes, and—best of all—got to spend some quality time (10 hours) with two hard-working sibling sweethearts. Despite all the flash, my biggest takeaway was that, as Jhene Aiko put it and Mike WiLL Made-It confirmed, Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi are “a bundle of joy.”

Mushrooms! Magic! Overcoming industry misogyny! All three were ripe topics for discussion when I sat down with two sisters-from-different-intergalactic-misters, alt-R&B queen Jhené Aiko and future benevolent supreme world leader Willow Smith, who are touring together right now. We also talked about their provenance among the stars, and that’s not a reference to Willow’s famous parents—both artists believe (or like to believe) they hail from the Sirius star system. So yes, they are bona fide hippies, and like hippies, we three shared our plates of farm-to-table pasta and clinked our hand-pressed ginger beers while further contemplating Vietnamese poet-monks and the benefits of home-schooling. It was trippy and genuinely life-affirming good.